History II / The Renewal of Christendom, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
Practice question · Select all that apply

Why do historians describe the numbering of the crusades as a modern convenience?

Hints
  1. Three of these are objections to the numbering; one is simply false.
  2. Think about the Third Crusade, and about the Albigensian campaigns.
Show the answer
  • A. Contemporaries did not label expeditions with numbers
  • B. Crusading traffic to the East was more or less continuous rather than falling into discrete expeditions
  • C. Crusades were also preached against targets in Iberia, the Baltic and southern France
Why

The numbered scheme was imposed later and it distorts twice over: it makes a continuous flow of pilgrims, settlers and armies look like five or eight discrete events, and it hides the crusades preached against Iberian Muslims, Baltic pagans and Latin Christian heretics, which absorbed a great deal of the movement’s energy.

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